All the world's a stage, really. Either that, or a computer screen, running programme: The Sims.

[Added on Monday, Feb 18]

The second part of Short+Sweet, the playwriting workshop ended in a whirl on Sunday. Eugene and I left on our separate ways with no further means of contact, but that's okay. I think of this stranger-with-a-smile as an ethereal moment to remind me that life isn't cold. There, God did send me a sign. (: Coool.


*

I did something for myself last night. I was inspired by Philip and all the self-help books ever published and the vague feeling of narcissistic irritation that if the world wasn't going to love me, I'd have to love myself. I signed up for a playwriting workshop, and went for it alone.

As I walked through City Hall with my Streetdirectory map printed on the back of a misprinted budget report, I had a strange feeling that something was going to happen. I wasn't sure what, and I wasn't really convinced. But I was excited anyway.

In the prettiness of the old parliament house, among plushy blue Ikea couches, something quite amazing did happen. I met a man with a great smile, whom I knew I'd seen before the moment he walked through the doors. Recognition was instant, we locked on to each other almost immediately, but we had absolutely no idea what the source of our Deja Vu was.

In the final moments of our meeting, as we sat in the MRT speeding off to a common destination, after discovering that he was enrolled in another film making course that I signed up for but didn't go, that he bought the second last ticket over the counter just not too long before I got the last one for this scriptwriting workshop, it hit us.

Turns out Eugene was my very first customer at the bar, on my very first night. The man who didn't like his cocktails too sweet, who wrote song requests in pictures on soggy coasters, who tried to tip me for good luck, who said I was a great, despite my incomprehension of the menu, my dropping of the tray into the pond, and general cluelessness about the bar's operation. (Oh god, I will always remember the incredulous look on bartender Pornsing's face when I asked for a "frozen Margarita, less sweet please". My greatest career ambition is to replicate that look perfectly should a customer ever request that again.)

I remember thinking, as I handled Eugene's bill that night, if I would ever see him again, if I would remember this one customer if he returned.

Very, very interesting. I am now convinced that a greater power has written a play governing all our lives. We are God's Sims, it cannot be denied.

All in a playwriting workshop.